Think Integral: Building Transpartisan Campaigns

An Ongoing Dialogue with Michael Ostrolenk about the Integral Concept

Free Liberal: In the last edition of the Free Liberal, you discussed integral thinking and how you look at the underlying psychological, cultural, behavioral and social aspects of any issue. You suggested that by looking at the totality of the issue you are able to generate more comprehensive approaches to problem solving and solution generation. That was a helpful introduction to the thinking behind your work. I know that your company, Global Integral Solutions (GIS) offers a few services based on these ideas including leadership training programs and the organization, support and management of transpartisan initiatives. Tell us about these transpartisan initiatives.

Michael Ostrolenk: The transpartisan initiatives are social and political change programs that respect the strengths of partisan belief systems while at the same time transcending narrow interests and embracing deeper common values. They are programs that are characterized by issues where partisan divides created by concentrated political and social power, limiting cultural forms and narrow individual mindsets impede progress and blocks meaningful responses for addressing real problems. We seek opportunities to diminish that divide by empowering individuals and communities.

FL: I know from our discussions that you also recognize a new culture forming in the U.S. How does this new culture fit into your thinking about these transpartisan initiatives?

MO: There is a new subculture that is developing in our country that I would call post-partisan. Actually, it is moving toward post-partisanship. This emerging group has yet to find a polity that is truly expressive of its interests. GIS characterizes this new group as socially expansive, ecologically sensitive, personally experimental, collectively experiential and discriminatingly tolerant with a communitarian edge. They do not necessarily identify themselves as left or right, Republican or Democrat. A part of our transpartisan programs include creating ways to assist this demographic in finding its polity and thereby contributing to solving contemporary problems. Also, this new group’s values are expansive enough that they recognize the important contributions to our society as a whole from both conservative and progressive belief systems. Therefore, they not only contribute new ideas to the body politic, they also embrace the benefits of more partisan ideologies.

FL: Can you give me an example?

MO: We are working with The Campaign for Better Health (www.betterhealthcampaign.org), which is a network of organizations including Citizens for Health (www.citizens.org) who are working on moving our disease management system to a health and wellness based culture. This is a transpartisan issue for many reasons. Everyone has had to deal with illness, disease, death. So, this issue transcends any political boundaries. Our healthcare system is now in crisis. Our present course is not sustainable financially or structurally. It is also not really a healthcare system but a disease management system. Unfortunately, the major remedies the politicians can come up with are redistribution of resources, i.e. trying to insure more people through government fiat.

Almost every time the government tries to help they add more burdens to the system and hasten its collapse. They are looking at symptoms of the problem and trying to solve it with piecemeal approaches.
Now, the new subculture I mentioned above understands what we mean by trying to create a health and wellness based culture. They get it because at its foundation it is about ecological sensitivity. Ecology in this case refers to both human somatic ecologies and the environment. They understand that the human body is just like a natural ecology -- a living system that requires nourishment and not poisons in order to thrive.

For them, it is also about experimentation and enhancing and deepening subjective experiences. That is why so many of them are drawn to subjectivity enhancing practices such as yoga, meditation, prayer, mindful fasting, sensory deprivation, chanting, sacred medicine, and various awareness based movement methods.

It also has a communitarian edge to it because part of it is about new types of relationships between the patient and the healthcare educators and providers. For this project we also tap into partisan or ideologies for the benefit of our goals. The libertarian right, do not necessarily favor a cultural change but they do favor maximizing individual choice and options. They favor removing the regulatory and legal barriers to people being able to choose for themselves how best to live their own lives. They are our natural allies on this issue. The progressive left is multicultural in their worldview, so they naturally support alternatives in healthcare within diverse cultures. There are other groups who we tap into to garner their support for our efforts utilizing their particular interest and worldviews.

FL: So, even though it may appear that people are on different sides in the political realm, the transpartisan value of health and wellness can make them allies. Am I right to believe that you have found other areas of transpartisan agreement other than in healthcare?

MO: We are working on a ‘Clean Energy’ project with The Arlington Institute (www.arlingtoninstitute.org). Clean energy is environmentally friendly, it’s experimental and there is a ‘good’ feeling one gets for supporting it. Allies include national security conservatives, libertarians, progressives and greens. The national security conservatives are concerned about our over reliance on foreign sources of oil. ‘Clean Energy’ is one way to reduce our reliance on foreign oil as well as to distribute power generation which will decrease the targets for terrorist attacks. The libertarian types favor freeing markets and they realize the major market distortions that are created by our oil based foreign policy, our subsidization of oil, gas and nuclear and our subsidization of secondary markets related to oil, gas and nuclear. The progressives are against corporate welfare and the greens are self-explanatory. Again, we look over the body politic, meet people where they are in terms of their worldviews, values systems and interests, and we utilize that to the advantage of creating positive social change.

FL: That makes sense. You are reaching beyond partisan divides and helping to move social institutions and cultures in a direction that is beneficial for all.

MO: Exactly, our ultimate goals and each of these initiatives are our vehicle to reach those goals are to see the liberation of the human spirit, increasing voluntary cooperation, fostering of the common good toward more humane exchanges in and between individuals, culture and nature as they effect science, medicine, religion, education, law, art and commerce.

FL: Those are impressive goals for your company. How did you come to those drivers for your company’s mission?

MO: I participated in an interesting series of exercises with Michael Margolis from Thirsty Fish. He helps company’s create and tell their stories for organizational development and marketing purposes. He had me envision the type of worlds I would like to see in the future and the value systems that generate them. The list of values came from those exercises. Those values are what wake me up in the morning. They are the values that have driven me my whole life. They also are the type of values, I think are necessary, if in fact we want to create and sustain a viable world. Now, it is important to note that these values will not be shared by everyone in our future world but by enough people and will be foundational in our social and political systems worldwide that they will serve our purposes well.

Michael D. Ostrolenk, is a Senior Editor of The Free Liberal and president of Global Integral Solutions.